


"I Love You"

by unfolded73



Series: Labels [2]
Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: Canon Queer Relationship, Episode: s04e12 Singles Week, Fluff, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-21
Updated: 2020-04-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 01:53:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23777173
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unfolded73/pseuds/unfolded73
Summary: The second of a series of snapshot fics centered around stages in David and Patrick's relationship.
Relationships: Patrick Brewer/David Rose
Series: Labels [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1602178
Comments: 50
Kudos: 319





	"I Love You"

**Author's Note:**

> Dug this fic out of my google doc graveyard and finished it! It's funny, when you actually finish fics, you can post them, lol. Set just after 4x12: Singles Week.

David unlocked his motel room and entered the quiet, empty space. Closing the door, the room dimmed until the only source of light was a tiny sliver of morning sunshine where the curtains gaped. He flipped on a lamp, dropped his overnight bag on his bed, and began gathering up a change of clothes before he showered. 

“Morning, kids.” His dad barged in, looking around at the unslept-in room. “Where’s your sister?” 

David rolled his eyes. “Didn’t Mom tell you about what happened yesterday? I’m sure she’s at Ted’s.”

“Eh, she mentioned something about Ted making a grand gesture in the café, I suppose…”

“Yeah, and Alexis has been pining after him for-basically-ever, so they may not get out of bed for days.” David wouldn’t have minded a few days in bed himself, because it turned out that sex with someone willing to whisper ‘I love you’ into your ear at the most perfect, incandescent moment was pretty great. His knees still felt a little wobbly, and he didn’t really feel like talking to his father at the moment.

“And where were _you_ last night?”

David huffed. “At Patrick’s. Where else would I be?” Ray had been home but David hadn’t been able to muster any worry about it. Patrick loved him. It still seemed impossible that Patrick hadn’t lost interest in him a long time ago, and instead somehow loved him. And was willing to say so. And even more miraculously, David had been willing to say it back.

“We can’t rent this room to paying customers, you know, so we expect you to actually sleep here,” his father said.

“And we do a lot of the time.” But for the first time in a long time, a future was starting to take shape in David’s mind where they wouldn’t. A future where Alexis moved in with Ted, and maybe he and Patrick got a place together. A happy future for him and his sister, something David would have doubted could possibly exist a few years ago. And not just because they lost all of their money. “But we are _adults_ , in _adult relationships_ , so sometimes we don’t sleep here.” He picked up his bundle of clothes and stepped around his father, intent on a shower.

“Well, I just—”

“I mean, Alexis and I are both in healthy relationships for once. With healthy, well-adjusted people who — in spite of our considerable emotional baggage — have decided we’re worthy of love. You should be, I don’t know, throwing a fucking parade, not harranging me about where we’re sleeping.”

His father looked taken aback at David’s forcefulness, and he held his hands up in a yielding gesture. “Okay. Sorry, sorry.”

David let out a deep breath and consciously relaxed his shoulders. “It’s fine. Did you need something?”

“Oh. Your mother and I are headed over to the café for breakfast; would you like to join us?”

David shook his head. “I can’t; I’ve gotta shower and change and be back at the store soon. I can’t leave Patrick to deal with all the Singles Week shoppers by himself.” He stepped into the bathroom and started to close the door, but his father reached out and stopped it with his hand.

“I am happy for you that you’re so happy, David. You and Alexis deserve all the happiness, you really do.”

He wanted to say something snarky, but his father’s sincerity made all the attitude bleed away. “Thanks.”

As David stood under the shower spray, his mind replayed the last day, the way Patrick had gently teased him about his love for Mariah while still somehow taking it completely seriously. The way he’d smiled when David was able to say those words back to him. 

The thing was, when Patrick said _‘I love you,’_ it was clear he’d been thinking it for a while. Weeks, probably. Or months. Whereas David really hadn’t been. No, that wasn’t exactly true — he had been thinking it, just not using the words. He hadn’t let himself even think the word ‘love’, not after how many times he’d been hurt. Not that he hadn’t been feeling it. In retrospect, he’d probably fallen in love with Patrick when he sang at their first open mic night. Or maybe that night they’d spent at Stevie’s. Or on their first date. Or when Patrick offered to help with the store. But now he’d thought the words — he’d _said_ them — and it was like a champagne cork that once popped out of the bottle, couldn’t be reinserted. He was fairly certain he’d repeated it in the throes of passion last night himself, a memory somehow both mortifying and sexy.

Alexis came home as he was finishing with his hair.

“Oh,” she said, looking surprised that he was there. “I thought you’d be at the store.”

“I’m on my way now,” he said, examining himself in the mirror one last time before moving to gather his belongings. 

“Okay,” she said, and then she crashed into him and hugged him.

“Ew, what’s going on?” David said, but he hugged her back before he extracted himself.

“Ted told me you guys talked.”

“Oh. I wish he hadn’t.”

“David, I basically owe you for the fact that Ted and I got back together so would you please just accept my gratitude?”

He rolled his eyes. “Fine.” He continued getting his bag organized for the day. “And while we’re being emotionally vulnerable to an uncomfortable degree… what’s been going on with you and Ted might’ve inspired some declarations of love in my own relationship,” David said, feeling like his throat was actively trying to close up before he confessed anything so heartfelt to Alexis.

“David!” Alexis clapped her hands. “Have you ever said that to anyone before?”

“Not in the context of a romantic relationship, no.”

She squeaked. “You and Patrick are so cute,” Alexis said with her limp-wristed hands held up high under her chin like she was a hamster. Or perhaps the implication was that he and Patrick were hamsters. 

David rolled his eyes and picked up his bag. “I’m going now.” Just before he closed the motel door behind him, he added, “I’m glad things worked out with Ted.”

~*~

David felt a surprisingly intense swoop in his stomach when he walked into the store and saw Patrick over against the far wall helping a customer, which was weird. If the love between them wasn’t new, only newly spoken aloud, why was seeing Patrick making him as weak in the knees as he’d felt in those first couple of weeks that they had been together?

Okay, perhaps it had a little something to do with how intimate the sex had felt between them last night. David could readily admit that his breadth of experience hadn’t prepared him for what it felt like to have the weight of Patrick’s love bearing down on him at the same time he pressed inside — slow, careful thrusts that David could barely process the physical sensation of when Patrick was staring into his eyes like that. Like he was precious.

David went to drop his belongings in the storeroom and to try to gain back some of his equilibrium. He needed to not be a mess. Patrick was so solid and sure about saying he loved him yesterday. Patrick took love for granted, growing up the way he had, spending most of his adult life loving Rachel with all the capacity that he’d had to love her. Loving his parents. Loving his cousins and aunts and uncles. Loving his baseball team. Loving his hockey team. Loving his math teacher, probably. David was the one so starved of love for most of his life that the very concept had seemed foreign to him a few years ago.

Hearing the bell above the door ring, David emerged to see if the customer count had increased or decreased. If the former, he needed to help on the floor. If the latter, he and Patrick were alone in the store.

It was the latter.

Patrick was behind the register, and he gave David one of those angelic smiles that reminded him of that morning after their first kiss, when David had been half-convinced when he walked through the door that Patrick was about to let him down easy. Tell him that he’d woken up realizing that he was actually straight, or that David wasn’t his type, or one of fifty other reasons David had begun concocting the second that Alexis asked _‘And you’re sure he wanted that?’_ Instead Patrick had given him one of these smiles and had kissed his cheek and had told him a weight had been lifted off his shoulders.

“Hey,” Patrick said, kissing David briefly on the lips and then giving him a smirk. “Long time, no see.”

“Mmm.” 

“Gwen was in earlier,” Patrick said as he moved behind David to get a box of facial cleanser from the stack next to the door. “What’s the deal with her and Bob, anyway? Did we figure out if he knows he’s in an open relationship?”

“I don’t know,” David said, not in the mood to gossip and Bob and Gwen. Well, he was never really in the mood to gossip about Bob and Gwen, but especially now he wasn’t. He wanted to recapture that perfect intimacy that he’d felt with Patrick yesterday. He wanted Patrick’s eyes on him. He wanted to be the sole focus of Patrick’s attention. He craved it.

Patrick, apparently, wanted to restock the facial cleanser.

David’s brain started to spin out. Should he have told Patrick _‘I love you’_ this morning already? How soon should he say it again? How frequently should he say it? Just wait until it comes up naturally in conversation, or… what? David wasn’t sure what the etiquette was, once those words were uttered. Patrick must know, he thought.

David approached him, putting his hands on Patrick’s shoulders and leaning over to kiss the back of his neck. “Hey,” he said, finally answering Patrick’s greeting.

Patrick shivered and set the box down, so David turned him and pulled him into a hug. He wrapped his arms around Patrick, loving the sensation of his boyfriend’s muscled chest through his thin shirt and the feel of Patrick’s arms around him, which never failed to soothe. 

“You okay?” Patrick asked.

“Mm hmm.”

Patrick pulled back enough to focus on his face. “I understand, you know, if yesterday was kind of… intense and if you need some time to process it. I don’t want you to feel like I’m expecting anything more from you just because we said—”

“It’s not actually that? At all?” David pulled back a little, letting his hands rest on Patrick’s shoulders where they always seemed to gravitate. “It’s not that I need to pull back or to process anything.”

“Okay.” Patrick was just giving him one of those looks of infinite patience he had. That look that said, _take as much time as you need, I’ll be here._

“It’s that I want that feeling all the time? That way I felt when you told me you love me, I want it all the time,” he whispered.

“Well, I do love you all the time, if that helps,” Patrick said.

David huffed. “Even when I rearrange the store according to my unnecessarily exacting standards?”

“Especially then,” Patrick said.

“I’m in love with you,” David said. It felt important to say it that way. Not just _‘I love you,’_ but _‘I’m in love with you.’_ It made his heart race, to say it that way. _‘I love you’_ was something he could say to Stevie if he didn’t think it would melt Stevie like a bucket of water over the Wicked Witch. _‘I’m in love with you’_ was something he could only mean about one person. 

“I’m in love with you, too,” Patrick said, his eyes so earnest that David felt a bit like he should avert his own gaze from them before he himself melted into a puddle.

The bell above the door rang and a woman towing a toddler behind her came into the store. David grimaced.

“I’ll take this one,” Patrick said softly. “Why don’t you see if the cheese needs restocking?”

David shot him a grateful look. “You really do love me, don’t you?”

Patrick winked and made his way over to see if the harried young mother needed any help.

~*~

After a few weeks had gone by, as autumn settled into Schitt’s Creek, the concept of it, of being loved by someone and loving them in return, struck David again and again as something he wasn’t sure he could live up to. He felt it when Patrick joined the Roses for dinner at the café and talked with his dad about baseball. He felt it when they were snuggled up on the sofa at Ray’s, eating pizza in front of the television. He was feeling it when Patrick took his hand as they were leaving the store one evening in late October, the two of them shuffling through the fallen leaves as they walked back to Ray’s together. 

He caught himself imagining what it would be like to take Patrick to visit New York, to show him off to all of his old friends. Would they see what _he_ saw in Patrick? That this smart, level-headed, generous, unassumingly sexy guy had fallen in love with him? Or would Patrick’s boring Levi’s and conservative haircut and disinterest in the latest trends blind them to what Patrick really was? Probably the latter, David thought, and he felt a surge of protectiveness against his so-called friends in his imaginary scenario. How dare they discount Patrick when he was so much better than they were in every way that counted? They weren’t worthy of Patrick. 

The anxiety that had been a hallmark of those first few months with Patrick, that had made it so easy to react badly to the fact of Rachel, that anxiety had morphed into a different thing that occasionally wormed its way into the forefront of his brain: a certainty that Patrick was too good for him. He squeezed Patrick’s hand hard enough that he turned and gave David a quizzical look.

“You okay?”

“Yeah. ‘M fine.”

Patrick kept gazing at him for a few seconds before he shrugged. “Okay.” He swung their hands back and forth as they walked.

 _I’m not worthy of you,_ David thought.

“Because it seems like there’s something on your mind,” Patrick said.

“You should want to date other people.”

“I don’t.”

“I know it seems like the pickings are slim out here in the middle of nowhere, but there are other gay men. Or bi, or pan, or… whatever. There are other options for you. Better options, probably.”

“David—”

“Guys who understand that R-O-Y thing—”

“ROI? Return on investment?” Patrick stopped walking and stepped in front of David to stop his forward momentum.

“See? Guys who’ll watch sports with you and won’t criticize your wardrobe.”

“Well, you’ve pretty much given up on criticizing my wardrobe,” Patrick said with a smirk. “David, I don’t want other guys. I want _you_.”

“Sometimes I don’t understand why,” David said softly.

Patrick stretched up on his toes and kissed him softly, just a brush of dry lips against his own. “I don’t need you to watch sports with me.” He tilted his head to the side, considering. “Remember last Sunday, when Ray was out all day and the house was quiet, and we sat across from each other on the sofa under a blanket and just read our books? And then later you helped me make dinner?”

David rolled his eyes. “I didn’t help that much.”

“You helped some. The point is, that was a perfect day as far as I’m concerned. Days like that, that’s what I need from you.”

“We used to fuck all day when Ray was out of the house.”

Patrick smirked. “Those days are pretty nice too. All of it is, with you. Why would I want to be with anyone else?”

“Because you were a starving man when you met me, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t foods out there that you’d prefer.”

“Well, I don’t love that analogy, and also I think you’re wrong. David, are you happy with me?”

He pressed his lips together and nodded.

“I’m happy with you too. I love you. I’m not sure it has to be more complicated than that. Okay?”

“Okay.” They started walking again. “I love you, too.”

He suspected it did have to be more complicated than that someday, but maybe not today. Not just yet. Today it could be the perfect aesthetics of a crisp fall day and David’s boyfriend’s hand in his.


End file.
